New York City has 1,779 teachers still without permanent positions who remain on the payroll. The teachers lost their jobs, in many cases, because their schools were closed or had to cut their budgets. They work as substitutes while waiting in what's called an “excess pool” (or Absent Teacher Reserve) of staffers who can apply for jobs at other schools while receiving their salaries.
The Department of Education says a total of 3,000 teachers were in this excess pool over the summer and almost half did find other positions. But it says 59 percent of those who didn't find jobs haven't attended a recruitment fair or applied for a single position. The department also says there are 726 teachers who have been in the pool since before the spring of 2010, and that hundreds of them have been without permanent positions for more than two years without searching for permanent positions.
The excess pool costs $100 million annually and the Bloomberg administration has been pushing for a one-year limit on how long teachers who lose their positions can remain on the payroll. The teachers' union, however, blames the city for creating the excess pool. Union President Michael Mulgrew also says Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has the power to assign those out-of-work teachers to any vacancies.
There are currently 1,242 vacancies, which isn’t enough to employ the 1,779 excess teachers. Many of the positions also require specialized licenses. Meanwhile, the city has a hiring freeze on new teachers to encourage principals to hire from the excess pool. But there are exceptions for teachers in hard-to-staff areas such as special education, science and bilingual education.
Comments [3]
In a city where principals are more accountable for results than ever and charter schools are paying excellent teachers up to $125k/yr, you can be sure that these teachers aren't being left on the sidelines because they're too expensive. Joel Klein knows that assigning teachers who are too unmotivated to look for new jobs to principals who don't want them won't benefit schools or students. I'm still waiting for the day when the union begins standing up for students, rather than using them as pawns to protect the tenure of the worst teachers in the system.
It is disheartening that the DoE still continues to distort the true picture of what is has created with the ATR pools. Let it be known that the great majority of educators in the ATR pools happen to be veteran educators who have been in the system from anywhere between 7-15 years, but many of them being 15+ years veterans. This in itself should not be a problem but since the 2005 contract, the principals have the discretion of hiring teachers and the norm now has been to hire the most affordable and untenured. Before the 2005 contract, teachers who were excessed where sent to available vacancies and the principals had to contract them without but thinking...if a certain amount of students needed a certain subject, the principal hired them without much thought, in the present system principals have make their budget and when hiring teachers, they will always prefer the most affordable and qualified ones, instead of the most qualified and expensive ones.
Boomberg is a pig.
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